Imagine The Walking Dead started in 50 years from now. The way things are going now, picture this scenario:
>A survivor is walking down a lonesome road.
>They arive at a small resort and there’s a car covered in dust and dirt in the parking lot.
>They approach the car and check whether it still has some bio fuel left in the tank.
>Still plenty.
>They look around spotting a decayed body close by.
>They search the body and are lucky to find a ‘keyless’ key belonging to the car.
>There are no door handles and the battery inside the key corroded away.
>They break the glass and open the door from the inside.
>Finally inside, there’s still no way to start the engine without the key.
>They have an idea.
>The digital wrist watch on the body should have the same battery as the key.
>After a bit of tinkering with some tools they get the key working again.
>They press the ignition button.
>The displays light up but the engine remains quiet.
>The displays show error messages:
ERROR CODE: ND47089
Tire pressure sensor subscription expired
Please schuedule service or enter payment information
Engine start failed
>MFW
Bikes are the apocalypse ideal vehicle. They are immensely underrated on apocalyptic media.
Fuel I need to constantly scavenger? No thanks.
Noise that would attract the zombies? No thanks.
The highway is collapsed and my RV cannot go through? No thanks.
A bike would get you quite good through many apocalyptic scenarios.
Or just use Heelys like a normal person.
Omg just imagine the war boys from fury road gracefully gliding down the road screaming ‘witness me’ 😂
You should read the book “Wolf and Iron”
Bikes have a limited lifespan in the sense that tires wear and degrade over time. Other parts can be replaced, repaired, welded. But tires will degrade within 2-5 years even when unused, depending on exposure to the elements.
Still much better than gasoline’s fast degradation of 3-6 months of course.
I have rode the bike I had when I was a kid several decades ago. The tires themselves were good just had to change the air chambers.
Maybe they were not good for profesional cycling but for moving around I didn’t notice anything wrong with them.
Lol check out modern bikes with electric shifters.
Man those electric stuntbikes with a screen are hot asf. But they are dangerous.
The game Generation Zero got it
Nemesis Games (Expanse Series) had bicycles. Not the strongest book in the series but Amos and Peaches learned how well bikes worked when the shit hit the fans. Very thoughtful authors.
This was Amos’s preferred (planetside) ride for a while in The Expanse!
I think modern apocalypse movies should show someone grabbing solar panels off apartment balconies to recharge an abandoned electric car.
Not even close to enough energy to be practical in the real world, but close enough for movie logic.
Kinda wrong.
You can’t get enough solar energy to directly drive a car any practical distance, but you aren’t actually driving your car most of the time. When you look at weekly energy requirements, most drivers would be able to accumulate enough energy for all of their driving with just a few decent panels. You would need a battery to take advantage of this, or only drive at night.
Also, check out the solar cannonball run. A guy made a mobile rig of like 40 flexible panels and drove a Model three across the US using only solar charging.
Just gonna leave this here:
Oh boy.
Alrighty not even gonna click that link, here is why…
Aptera claims to get about 40 miles of range per day with their full solar package and ideal conditions. Which is fantastic! But, it’s not the solar technology that makes that car viable, its the high efficiency of their vehicle. If we assume 40 miles per day, 12 hours of sun, you could hypothetically directly drive the Aptera with solar at a blistering …3.3mph. To put it simply, unless solar panels get an order of magnitude more efficient, we are not going to get a direct solar driven vehicle. It will always be solar plus a big ass battery.
I’ve been watching Aptera closely since 2015, and I already have a reservation for one. That’s the other reason I don’t have to click that link. I get updates straight into my feed and I’ve gone over their documents multiple times forward and back.
Correct - not direct drive, but seems like that’s not really a necessary goal for most of us. If you really need to be able to just drive non stop all day while the sun is out, I don’t think that’s been solved yet (would still have to stop for gas even).
Hence why I said “Kinda Wrong” .
Practically any solar panel can fully recharge an EV, it’s just a matter of how long it’s going to take. Sure there are some battery losses, yada yada, but a single 100W panel would charge up an EV in a few months.
practical
If the car is tied to a location that is already safe and secure in a post apocalyptic setting, then sure. But a post apocalyptic car is really only needed to haul stuff around or as protection against things outside the vehicle, and depending on the apocalypse you likely need to stay mobile, reinforce a secure location, or relocate to somewhere remote away from urban areas. Transporting the panels to a remote location will take time and effort, and if you need to be mobile you won’t have time to charge.
Now if you had a rural home with solar panels on the roof and the location was secure an electric car would serve you well until something mechanical or the batteries failed and if you didn’t need to travel far you could use it regularly too.
Electric vehicles can charge from a standard outlet. I would imagine if you gather enough of those panels that actually plug into a standard outlet, you could charge a car (though slowly). Your average EV can put on about 10 miles to its “tank” every hour of charging at 120 volts. I don’t know what the amps of those panels are though.
The alternative would be if the protagonist found a home with solar panels and backup batteries. These exist today, and are becoming more common. I don’t know if sodium ion backup batteries have a longer life than LFP or lithium ion.
In a real apocalypse scenario, those BEVs would get scavenged to create electric
bikesgenerators, grain mills, and water pumps. The original cars are not useful in a world without deliberately car-dependent economic systems, and it’s just not a proper apocalypse if you’ve still got an automotive lobby.Edit: BEV motors 2 big 4 bike
You would need a lot of panels and days of time to charge to any significant amount of distance. If you set up a solar farm in one location you could use the car for short, regular trips.
You wouldn’t be able to take the panels with you on trips without stopping for several days at a time before traveling another dozen miles or so. Electric vehicles really do pull a massive amount of energy compared to solar cells that the vehicle could haul around.
>Survivor finds car
>plenty fuel
>pry open gas cap
>siphon
>go back home and run generator.
I knew hauling around a random jerrycan would pay of some day
shit, this thing is heavy when it’s full> Realize if I don’t have at least some plan of how to use fuel or a container to put it in, why am I looking for it?
>Either fill the container I brought specifically for this, or abandon this useless pursuit to look for a bit of wire to make snares.
They’ll be dragging classic cars out of people’s garages and sheds.
If you were going to be realistic about this, it would be old, mechanical injection diesel engines still going long after the apocalypse. And bicycles, of course.
If you are being realistic, your best shot is probably EVs and having solar panels, those can maybe last about 20 years.
Diesel and Petrol will go bad in a year.
Either way you are on a finite resource, so the actual best bet is having horses
You think you’re going to drive anywhere 2 years after the apocalypse?
After a winter or two, between abandoned vehicles and lack of maintenance, the roads are going to be impossible to navigate for any distance that you couldn’t just walk or bike.
Depends where you are, in my neck of the woods there are plenty of roads that have been largely abandoned for 20 plus years and are still drivable. Not a comfy ride but still a drive none the less.
Most road damage comes from being driven on so assuming it doesn’t get undermined most would still be usable even ten years after abandonment, not factoring in getting buried or flooded.
Diesel lasts longer then a year. If you can get a commune going, you can grow diesel fuel from seed oil, but only with older diesel. Not that you’d want to direct too much food resources to transportation, but if you have enough farm land, diesel tractors are much more common then electric and easier to work on.
You can also run modified gas engines to run off of Wood Gas and wood could be scavenged from most places. Probably the best option for any fast scouting operations, although you would need to let the system idle. The start up process takes some time.
I’d bet on an old diesel running on vegetable oil outlasting an EV.
You’d rather convert vegetables into oil for diesel fuel than to eat them?
It depends, because if the car breaks down, you will need parts to fix it. Hopefully parts you can get off another car of similar make. Also older cars can use universal parts, newer cars are more heavily proprietary, so electric may not be the way to go for longterm use.
What will be considered a classic car in 50 years? A 2017 Toyota Camry Station Wagon?
Technically yes, a 50 year old Camry would be considered a classic.
deleted by creator
this is like, totally out of left field.
but if you want to live out the whole apocalypse scavenger, doomsday prepper fantasy. Project Zomboid and its mods are a great game for that.
PZ is set in 1993 though. And for some reason their 1993 does not have bicycles.
Just gotta find a server with one of the mods…
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2988491347
The best part of PZ modding is how little you have to do. Boot the regular game and click multiplayer and just join a modded server. The game will download, install, and apply a few hundred mods without you doing anything.
a bicycle mod literally just came out a week or so ago
There’s always been one. It’s not a completely integrated experience though.
There’s been a mod that adds motorcycles and ATVs too but it’s clunky. I haven’t bothered to test the new versions but it used to be that you could only get on and off the bike from one side
No idea if build 42 has bikes in them yet, but with all the work they’re putting into the game I can imagine that they’re eventually going to put in different forms of transportation.
Bikes, skateboards and motor cycles have already been modded in but official support would always be nice.
In writing this comment I thought about with the new metalworking and smiting coming in, building a handcar for railroad tracks would be awesome and would put use to the basically useless railway system they have on the map now.
B42 is sadly going in the wrong direction currently. It’s addressing a lot of early and mid game stuff that allows you to basically just fuck off into the woods. But end game is still dull.
Yea true, not going to say you’re wrong but I feel like they’re making the bones of the game really solid and from there, branching out. The basements and the high rise buildings are going to be crazy imo, and the new skill tree and class reworks are going to give it a solid foundation, not to mention overhauling how weapons shoot. Them adding in NPCs is also a step in the right direction for making the game more interactive.
Let’s hope the can pad out the end game. Because like you said it’s kind of dull after a certain point. But I feel like with any sandbox game, you have to make your own goals and fun - and those experiences are always better with friends.
I do think they have the right ideas, it’s just a matter of time and implementation.
I know, I got like 400 hours in it.
Keyless start using too much an issue. You can start card with dead key transponders. This new phenomenon of subscription will be an issue though.
Imagine dragging a Stellantis vehicle and using the satnav. You stop at an intersection to get your bearings and the screen same you to extend your warranty.
Even right now. Look at how people have to wait in huge lines to get some gas every time there is a natural disaster, or extreme weather. After a few days, or even hours, it’s mostly gone.
This was a thrill ride to read high wow
well-written, too. this would make a great short film.
edit - i just remembered my favourite quote from Spaceballs: “Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!”
Aside from the battery in the keyfob, what about the car’s battery? If left connected most cars would drain theirs within a month or two. Also, if left discharging/ed like that for too long, the cells can start to sulphate, leading to a bad/non-working cell.
They did a good job covering that in The Last of Us (season one, episode…4 or 5?): 20ish years post-apocalypse, someone very prepared has kept battery cells in a refrigerator (in acid maybe?) and they have to rebuild the battery before they can use the car, but the battery works.
I think in 50 years we hopefully have figured out solid state graphene film batteries.
I feel like any apocalypse is going to see lots of people try to rush to or from somewhere leading to clogged roads that make cars virtually useless until one gets way way into the boondocks.
All this fuel talk when IRL you can’t drive anywhere if fuel in the tank is older than several weeks.
It takes much longer than that for gas to go bad… I have left untreated gas in lawnmowers, motorcycles, boats etc for entire off-seasons (plus a couple months on top of that) and the gas still goes boom just fine. I wouldn’t race with it… And I’m sure it would test at a lower octane level, but it will still run an engine
Correct, I have let gas sit for over a year and it still works fine in carbureted engines like my mower and motorcycle. I just pick up the gas can and swirl it around vigorously to stir up the parts that might have settled. Also this is only non-ethanol gas being stored, probably would be worse with the ~10% ethanol blends that are standard.
Except most modern cars have turbo and direct injections and are very sensitive to gas/diesel quality. Even your diesel car will break down on an aged diesel. If the tank is not full, it will have degraded in contact with air, and if it stayed too long, it may have absorbed too much humidity and will ruin your advanced diesel engine.
Clever, and grounded enough in reality to make plausible sci fi.
What if there’s like a dark cloud allover the earth, how many human body should I plug into my car so I could get toilet paper in the nearest Walmart?
